Beer and Bible

Understanding how the Holy Spirit inspires the Bible

04/03/2022

Jn 8:1-11 Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area, and all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle. They said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he bent down and wrote on the ground. And in response, they went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replied, “No one, sir.” Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”

I am afraid that today’s homily will sound more like a Scripture study than a Sunday sermon. That is, it may feel like you are sitting in a Baptist Church rather than in a Catholic Church because I am going to talk about some fascinating features of the Bible, focusing on our gospel passage from Jn 8:1-11, the episode of the woman caught in adultery. So, with that said, would you please take out your Bibles and turn to Jn 8? And by the way, that is what B.Y.O.B. really means: “Bring Your Own Bible.” It has nothing to do with beer. Now you know this is not a Catholic Church because we would rather drink a beer than think about the Bible.

Let me just make two observations about Jn 8:1-11 and the pericope (the passage) of the adulterous woman. First, did you know that this is a controversial passage that does not occur in any of the ancient Greek manuscripts of the Bible? What does that mean? Well, there are no extant or existing original, autograph books of the Bible. There is not original gospel of John, no original of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, no original Letter to Philemon, or an original book of Revelation. Rather, what we have in our hands are copies of copies of copies, but not one original.

Just take a moment to let that soak in. When I learned this in the seminary, it blew my mind. What that means, therefore, is that, of the oldest copies we have – none of which are the original gospel of John – this passage from Jn 8:1-11 is not found in any of them. Put differently, it was a later insertion, probably around the fifth century, that is, during the 400’s it was inserted into the original gospel of John.

What does that mean for us practically? Well, in a sense, it means nothing. In other words, the Bible we read at home, the Bible we proclaim at Mass, the BYOB we carry to Scripture study classes, did not come to us perfectly leather-bound, with red letters for the words of Jesus, and gold-edged pages. Instead, it came to us piece-meal, epistle by epistle, book by book, pericope by pericope. And it was the Church, the apostles and their successors the bishops, who made decisions about which books to include and which ones to exclude from the final version of the Bible which contains 73 books.

Just like we ask the question: which came first, the chicken or the egg, so sincere Christians should ask the question: which came first, the Church or the Bible? And the resounding answer that salvation history provides us is: the Church came first and put together the Bible as we hold and cherish it today, like putting together Humpty Dumpty who was scattered into a thousand pieces. But all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, in this case, did put Humpty Dumpty together and we call it the Holy Bible.

When we come to Jn 8:1-11, and learn that it was a later insertion approved by the Church, it should not shock or surprise us in the least. Why not? Because that is how the whole Bible was put together: through the Holy Spirit working not only through the inspired author (St. John) but also by the hands and heads of inspired bishops, who chose to include this passage in the Bible. This is first lesson we learn from Jn 8:1-11: the Church came first and compiled the canonical Scriptures. In other words, without the Church, you cannot BYOB.

The second observation about Jn 8:1-11 is the attempted but averted stoning of the adulterous woman. But did you know that chapter 8 of John both begins but also ends with an attempted but averted stoning episode? Check it out. At the end of John 8, Jesus claims for himself the Name that Jews exclusively applied to God himself, namely, “I am,” or “I am who am.” You remember, of course, how God revealed this name to Moses in the burning bush in Ex 3:14.

As a matter of fact, Jesus ascribes this divine appellation to himself seven times in John’s gospel. He says, “I am the bread of life,” (Jn 6:35), “I am the light of the world,” (Jn 8:12), “I am the door of the sheep,” (Jn 10:7), “I am the good shepherd” (Jn 10:11), “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25), “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6), and I am the true vine” (Jn 15:1). At the end of Jn 8, Jesus uses this name for himself yet again, where we read: “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am’. So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.”

In other words, the two stoning scenes perfectly “book-end” the 8th chapter of John because they both highlight Jesus’ divinity. How so? In Jn 8:1-11 (at the beginning of the chapter), Jesus forgives the adulterous woman about to be stoned, and only God can forgive sins. And in Jn 8:58-59 (at the end of the chapter), Jesus claims the divine Name for himself and faces stoning himself for his audacity to assume the status of the Almighty. We begin to glimpse, therefore, how these stoning scenes are not accidental or arbitrary; they are not a careless collection of stories.

Rather, we start to see how the divine Author (the Holy Spirit) works through the inspired human author and the inspired hierarchy of the Church to give us a masterpiece of literature. But even more so, we discover we have a testimony of faith, so that we too can believe that Jesus is the Son of God, indeed, God the Son. Jn 8:1-11 teaches us how we should never leave home without BYOB, and quench our thirst with the Bible rather than beer.

Praised be Jesus Christ!